Contents

Abstract

USB LCD

These instructions are essentially for a USB LCD Display[1], a USB docking Palm-OS device can emulate a USB LCD interface so that no external adapter is needed. The same instructions could be used with some modification to add an LCD with: Add a Serial port to the PowerPC Linkstation as a matter of fact someone on the kurobox wiki has done just that[2]

This article is for people that want to add an LCD display to their Linkstation but don't want to crack it open[3], and happen to have a USB cabled Palm OS [4] device lying around. Using PalmOrb[5] you can emulate an external (20x4),(40x4) or (26x16) character LCD display.

Prerequisites

This article assumes that you have installed FreeLink. A 2.6 Kernel Upgrade to the 2.6-kernel (ppc only)
has better USB support, but a 2.4 Kernel would probably work as well. For these instructions you will need a USB cabled Palm-OS Device.

Method

Install PalmOrb on your USB cabled Palm-OS Device. The v1.1a4[6] version has the most font options for a (20x4) emulated LCD, there are several other versions available on Sourceforge[7]. It emulates a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.

Configure the PalmOrb app to use the USB Port:Menu -> Options -> Serial:Device:USB

Install and remove LCDproc using apt-get (this should take care of any dependencies) The Debian Stable Version only has the LCDd Daemon program but not the lcdproc client, so you'll have to install lcdproc from a tarball. Kind of an ugly solution to get the dependencies resolved, but it works:

Run the LCDd (LCDproc Daemon) and LCDproc client with some options to see if it works.

LCDd &
lcdproc C M X

Hopefully you got some output on the Palm-OS device as an LCD. For other clients Google:lcdproc to see what other LCDProc clients you can find. Or just go here[11]

What's the point?

Palm as Terminal (untested)

Enable terminal access with this command: getty -h -L ttyUSB0 9600 vt100, and use a terminal program like ptelnet[12]

Well if you happen to have a USB enabled older Palm OS PDA lying around and want an external LCD display for the price of nothing, now you have it!

Shell Scripts

#!/bin/sh
# lcdmon.sh
# Kill any LCDd that are running first, Start the Daemon and
# fork it to the background. Then run LCDProc with the Time option and
# fork it to the background.
# You can run lcdproc -? alone to see what options there are.
# Run another client: netlcdclient which gives U/Dl speed
# You could run this script at startup.
killall LCDd
LCDd &
lcdproc T &
netlcdclient -i eth0 -a LinkSTN -d